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Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. adj. Prevalent in or peculiar to a particular locality, region, or people: diseases endemic to the tropics. See Synonyms at native.
  2. adj. Ecology Native to or confined to a certain region.
  3. n. Ecology An endemic plant or animal.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. Peculiar to a people or nation, or to the residents of a particular locality: chiefly applied to diseases.
  2. In phytogeography and zoögeog., peculiar to and characteristic of a locality or region, as a plant or an animal; indigenous or autochthonous in some region, and not elsewhere.
  3. n. A prevalence of endemic disease.
  4. In phytogeography, properly, confined to a particular region, whether indigenous or not: sometimes confused with indigenous. Originally used (A. P. De Candolle, 1820) of genera whose species are all grouped in one region; later, also of species whose distribution is similarly limited. Compare polydemic, pandemic, and sporadic.

Wiktionary

  1. adj. Native to a particular area or culture; originating where it occurs.
  2. adj. Peculiar to a particular area or region; not found in other places.
  3. adj. Prevalent in a particular area or region.
  4. n. An individual or species that is endemic to a region.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. adj. Peculiar to a district or particular locality, or class of persons.
  2. adj. Belonging or native to a particular people or country; native as distinguished from introduced or naturalized; hence, regularly or ordinarily occurring in a given region; local; ; -- often distinguished from exotic.
  3. n. An endemic disease.

WordNet 3.0

  1. adj. of or relating to a disease (or anything resembling a disease) constantly present to greater or lesser extent in a particular locality
  2. n. a plant that is native to a certain limited area
  3. adj. native to or confined to a certain region
  4. n. a disease that is constantly present to a greater or lesser degree in people of a certain class or in people living in a particular location
  5. adj. originating where it is found

Etymologies

  1. From Greek endēmos, native, endemic : en-, in; see en-2 + dēmos, people; see dā- in Indo-European roots.

Examples

  • “The charges come as Justice Department civil rights division lawyers, at the invitation of New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, conduct a broader probe of the New Orleans Police Department to root out what he called endemic corruption of a department plagued by incompetence long before Katrina.”

    The Wall Street Journal: Police Officers Charged Over Post-Katrina Deaths

  • “Another endemic is the golden Cattleya orchid, (Cattleya aurea), that is sympatric in the upper Sinú with the gigas Cattleya orchid, (Cattleya warscewickzii), showing the contact zone between Magdalena Medio and Chocó-Darién; the upper Sinú is the only place where the naturally occurring hybrid, the spectacular (Cattleya X hardyana) has been found.”

    Sinú Valley dry forests

  • “A civil liberties group surveyed 37 different countries and named Britain, along with Russia, China, Malaysia and Singapore as countries that practice what it terms endemic surveillance against individuals.”

    CNN Transcript Nov 2, 2006

  • “She said that everyone at FAMU -- from administrators, to students, to alumni -- and other schools need to work together to stop hazing, which she called endemic to a larger cultural issue.”

    CNN.com

  • “The news reporting on this blog (especially the back story) is much more robust than most of the drivel reported by the electronic media, and it never contains the pro-establishment spin endemic to the Oregonian and (to a lesser extent) the Tribune and Willy Week.”

    Just don't call me Chief (Jack Bog's Blog)

  • “Unfortunately, a pothole perspective that seems almost endemic is bringing Sioux Falls far too close to falling off a cliff.”

    A Progressive on the Prairie » Suffering from pothole perspective » Print

  • “Certain endemic diseases seemed to be connected with certain geographical locations and weather patterns.”

    Pestilence and Headcolds: Encountering Illness in Colonial Mexico

  • “Isolating mechanisms and modes of speciation in endemic angiosperms of the Juan Fernandez Islands.”

    Juan Fernández Islands temperate forests

  • “But many of those problems remain endemic to the Arab world.”

    The Roots of Our Discontent

  • “Certain endemic diseases which have been almost entirely eliminated in the industrialized world are responsible for rampant child sickness and still take a shocking toll of child life.”

    United Nations Children's Fund - Nobel Lecture

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‘endemic’ has been looked up 2374 times, loved by 10 people, added to 66 lists, and has a Scrabble score of 12.